Sunday, June 14, 2009

Earth to Netanyahu

I said I'm taking a break unless something demands comment. Netanyahu's speech today does. His condition that a Palestinian state have "no army [and] no control of its air space" (to quote the BBC report) is absurd. The possession of an army of some kind has become a symbolic marker of modern sovereign statehood. Costa Rica and a few other states have no army, but they are very much the exception. The condition that any Palestinian state be demilitarized is a complete non-starter, as Netanyahu must know.Update: As one commentator wrote in Ha'aretz (quoted here), "It is unlikely that a single responsible Palestinian worthy of the name will accept this junk." (This is someone's translation from Hebrew to French and then my translation from French to English, but it gets the gist of it.)